0:00
Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline?
0:04
That's bullspend, and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.
0:09
My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had, impressions.
0:16
Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach.
0:19
LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks.
0:23
Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $25 credit.
0:27
Go to linkedin.com/campaign turns the conditions apply.
0:30
Welcome to day five of how to build a godly and manly foxhole.
0:34
I'm your host Kyle Thompson of Undaunted Life. Let's get into it.
0:38
All right, guys, before we get into today's devotional material,
0:40
we are going to look at the first four days of this devotional. We're going to give you a quick recap
0:44
because in each of those days, we went into some questions, and on the first day, we talked about
0:48
what makes a godly man. Day two, we talked about what makes a manly man.
0:52
Day three, we talked about, can you be both godly and manly?
0:55
And yesterday, we talked about, was Jesus a manly man?
0:58
So in day one, what makes a godly man? We talked about two things.
1:01
One, the truth outside of the self. So that's the narrative of humanity that we're all living in.
1:06
And then the second part was the truth displayed publicly, which answered the question,
1:10
what makes a godly man? And those are the listed godly characteristics that we went into.
1:14
In day two, we talked about what makes a manly man.
1:16
So at Undaunted Life, we have a definition of what a man is.
1:19
And that's a man is a male that cultivates spiritual, mental, and physical resilience daily.
1:24
We talked about the cease, Navy, seal Adam Brown in his story.
1:27
We also talked about Paul and his second letter to Timothy.
1:30
Then in day three, we talked about, can you be both godly and manly?
1:33
And yes, of course, we said that you could definitely be both things.
1:36
That Adam Brown is a great example of that.
1:38
Then we went into the example of Nehemiah as well.
1:40
And then yesterday, day four, we talked about, was Jesus a manly man.
1:43
And obviously Jesus is a godly man because, of course, he's, you know, God,
1:49
but Jesus is a manly man because he's the perfect man, right?
1:52
He's the perfect man, perfectly manly Jesus cultivated spiritual, mental, and physical
1:58
resilience on a daily basis.
1:59
So we have the stories like him turning over the tables in the temple and his 40 days of
2:03
temptation in the desert.
2:04
So that's all kind of going into the fact that Jesus was a manly man.
2:07
So guys, if you have not listened to the first four days of this, you want to make sure you
2:10
do that before you move on to today's content.
2:12
But if you do go back to some of the content of day one, I talked about how we've heard
2:17
it all before, you know, that men are lonely, that men don't have friends,
2:20
that men don't have other men that they can really count on, that men are engaged for the
2:25
most part in the church, at home, at their workplaces.
2:27
Also men are leading themselves or others.
2:30
And I briefly introduced a definition of foxhole and I said a foxhole is a group of men
2:35
that constantly push each other to be better men.
2:37
That's like the most dumb down version of the definition that I could give you.
2:42
And then also back on day two, we talked about what makes a manly man.
2:44
As I mentioned before, the definition is a man is a male that cultivates spiritual,
2:48
mental and physical resilience daily.
2:51
So to extrapolate that out in order to answer today's question of what is a foxhole,
2:57
here is the definition that we're using in this devotional for what a foxhole is.
3:00
A foxhole is a group of men that constantly push each other to cultivate spiritual,
3:06
mental and physical resilience daily.
3:09
Now we had elements of those definitions got to spread throughout those first four days,
3:14
but that's it a foxhole is a group of men that constantly push each other to cultivate
3:17
spiritual, mental and physical resilience daily.
3:20
And this includes men that bring their own unique characteristics and qualities to the group.
3:24
So even my personal foxhole, we have a lot of different kinds of guys that bring a lot
3:29
to the table, but they bring specific things.
3:31
So I'm specifically thinking about Shelby the stoic.
3:34
He's a guy that brings a very stoic attitude because we work out a lot.
3:37
We do a lot of brutal workouts, but he never looks uncomfortable.
3:39
He brings a stoicism to our group.
3:41
We have Adam the host.
3:43
So Adam, he's he's a guy that just loves having people over.
3:46
He loves connecting people.
3:47
He loves kind of having that center place for everybody to kind of gather and, you know,
3:51
bro down or hang out or whatever they're doing.
3:53
We've got Jermaine the athlete.
3:54
This is a guy that has never done anything that was difficult.
3:58
Seemingly, whether it's on a ball field or on a jujitsu mat or something like that,
4:01
that just things come very easily to him.
4:04
You have Rocky the positive.
4:06
This is a guy that is just so unbelievably positive.
4:09
He's so positive for a guy like me.
4:10
It's painful because I tend to be a little bit more pessimistic in my style,
4:14
but we have a lot of guys in our foxhole that bring certain things to the group.
4:18
And that's what makes it this special gumbo of dudes that are really, really pushing one another
4:23
because where one guy is strong, another guy will be weak.
4:25
And then that's an opportunity for them to get together to maybe kind of fix that up to
4:29
where they can learn from one another.
4:30
So as important as it is for you to know what a foxhole is,
4:34
it's equally important for you to know what a foxhole is not, obviously.
4:39
So a foxhole is not just a group of guys.
4:43
Okay. So some of you have a group of guys that get together somewhat often.
4:47
It just happens to be this group of people.
4:49
Maybe all your wives are friends and you're just the guys that are kind of left over on
4:53
the other side of the house, you know, trying to hang out and make things not super awkward,
4:56
but that's not a foxhole.
4:57
A foxhole is also not just a men's event once a year.
5:02
I know there are a lot of churches out there that think throwing one men's event a year,
5:07
putting like 1% of the church's budget for the for events for the year
5:11
into this, you know, one day where they serve some guys, some barbecue and bring in some
5:15
ex football player to come up and give a speech about how he used to chase women and do drugs
5:19
and he doesn't do that anymore. That's not a foxhole. That's an event.
5:23
And I'm not dogging on those events. A lot of those events are pretty good.
5:26
And then a lot of guys have a lot of fun there, but that's not a foxhole.
5:29
A foxhole is also not just a men's prayer breakfast.
5:33
So there's a lot of churches that do maybe a once a month or once a quarter men's prayer
5:38
breakfast, they get everyone together at like four o'clock in the morning and they have pancakes
5:42
and bacon or whatever. And the guys get together and pray.
5:45
Again, that's also not a foxhole. I'm not saying that's a bad thing that they do that,
5:48
but it's not a foxhole, right? This is not a daily thing.
5:52
So a foxhole is not just your old college buddies that you rarely see either, right?
5:58
So I know a lot of guys that had a really tight foxhole, either maybe they played on a baseball
6:02
team or maybe this was the people on their floor in the dorm that they lived in or maybe this
6:06
was their frat house or something, but they had that group in college. And maybe every time one
6:11
of the guys gets married or maybe they're having their first kid, the guys all get together,
6:14
again, that's a good thing to have. It's not a foxhole. A foxhole also is not just the guys from
6:20
work that you go to lunch with sometimes or the guys that are on your, your intramural softball
6:23
team or the guys that are on this or on that, those aren't foxholes. Okay.
6:26
And we're going to get into here a little bit more, a little bit of a deeper ideas to kind of how
6:31
you do that. And we'll be doing that over the next two days as well. And as a quick aside,
6:34
a foxhole isn't a group of perfect guys either. Because I think some things whenever I talk about
6:39
this subject, sometimes people think like, Oh man, I'm trying to find these diamonds in the rough.
6:42
And how am I going to find a, you know, a group of eight, 10, 12 of these diamonds and rough?
6:46
That's not it. All the guys I mentioned earlier, those aren't perfect dudes. The rest of the guys
6:51
that are in my foxhole, these aren't perfect guys, but they bring some amazing things to the table.
6:56
And they help me cultivate spiritual mental and physical resilience on a daily basis.
7:00
So that's what a foxhole is and is not. But let's make it even a little bit more practical. I'm
7:06
going to give you guys some very practical ideas to how to think through what a foxhole is and
7:11
who's inside of a foxhole. So a foxhole is filled with three AM friends, not six PM friends.
7:19
So let me obviously elucidate that a little bit further because that just sounds crazy.
7:24
But a lot of us have six PM friends. So if you call him or text him before about six PM,
7:31
they'll probably take your call. They'll probably return your text. They'll probably help you out.
7:35
But after six PM, it's like, Oh, you know, I'm busy or I've got, you know, a fantasy football
7:39
draft tonight or I got to go hit some balls or I got to go put the kids down or I got to
7:42
I got to take my wife on a date. I got to there's six PM friends. Those aren't guys that are going
7:47
to be there for you when you know what is hitting the fan. It's just not one of those.
7:52
They're not one of those types of guys, but if they see him public, you know, so hey,
7:55
how's it going brother? And they'll shake your hand and then they'll move on with their life.
7:58
It just is what it is. I'm talking about three AM friends. So when you call this person at three
8:05
AM, not only do they answer the phone, but also you can hear them as they're saying hello,
8:12
getting their pants on, grabbing their keys, grabbing their stuff. They're on the way.
8:17
Right? Hey, Foxhole is filled with three AM. I'm on my way, friends. They don't know what we're
8:23
doing. They don't know how many shovels they need to bring because we're burying a body,
8:27
but they're showing up. These guys are showing up. I had a great example of this. So when my son
8:32
was about six weeks old, six weeks old, he had a very severe abnormality, came up and kind of had
8:38
had to have a potential emergency surgery. It was it was kind of a tough thing. It's our first
8:43
kid and we're like kind of freaking out. One of my buddies from my Foxhole called me. He was on his
8:48
way to my house to take care of my dogs because he knew we left the house in a rush to get to
8:52
the emergency room. He called and said, I'm on my way to take care of your dogs. Just let me know
8:57
how to get in the house. Now, this guy had never, I don't know, even though if he had met my dogs
9:04
before, I don't know if he had ever been around him. And he really didn't have any way to get into
9:08
my house. I was going to have to tell him how to get in, but he was on his way. Now, in this
9:12
scenario, I'd already had somebody take care of the animals. It was all good to go. But he wasn't
9:16
I'm on my way friend. He wasn't a, Hey, you know, I know you're going through a tough time right
9:20
now. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know. I know people mean well when they say
9:24
something like that. But most of those people would actually probably bristle at the fact that
9:28
you were to ask them for something. You don't want people like that in your Foxhole. You want
9:32
three AM friends. You want I'm on my way friends. So you might be thinking to yourself, well, great.
9:40
Thanks a lot. I mean, why should that information be important to me though?
9:44
And the reason that it should be important to you is because Jesus, you know, that whole
9:50
son of God guy, he even found it important to surround himself with the group of men
9:54
as he performed his earthly ministry. You've likely heard of them, the 12 apostles.
9:59
So we see them introduced in Mark three versus 13 through 19. I'll go ahead and read it here.
10:05
And he went up on the mountain and called to him those who he desired and they came to him.
10:09
And he appointed 12 whom he also named apostles so that they might be with him.
10:13
And he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.
10:17
He appointed the 12 Simon to whom he gave the name Peter, James, the son of Zebedee,
10:22
and John, the brother of James, to whom he gave the name of Bo and urges that is sons of thunder,
10:27
Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James, the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus
10:34
and Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. So Jesus chooses his 12 apostles
10:41
from his disciples from a larger group of disciples. And this is roughly about a year and a half
10:46
after John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the world by baptizing him. So we see that Mark one
10:51
versus one through 11. So that's a very seminal point that we see there. Now also picking the 12
10:56
is likely not a random thing. That's not just a random number of people that he decided to choose.
11:00
Okay, so as the English standard version study Bible commentary puts it, initially Jesus proclaims
11:06
the kingdom of God to descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel and the selection of the 12 apostles
11:11
probably represents these tribes. So we're looking at Revelation 21 14 here and it reads this.
11:16
And the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles
11:21
of the lamb. Okay, so this is very important for us to kind of kind of think through.
11:25
These are going to be the 12 men that will be the closest to Jesus during the remainder of
11:30
his earthly ministry. I mean, just a crazy job. All right, they're going to travel with Jesus.
11:36
They're going to be prepped and molded from ministry moving forward by Jesus.
11:41
They're going to serve as a support system for Jesus, you know, as if you needed one. But I mean,
11:47
you get the idea. But here's the other thing. And this is great for all of us that are going
11:51
through this right now. These were dopes. These guys were a bunch of dopes. These were not
11:58
amazing incendiary guys. These weren't the men in the community that everybody looked to for guidance
12:03
and, you know, to get money from or to get influence for like it was not that group of guys.
12:09
It was just a group of dudes, including a horrifically terrible selfish person,
12:15
Jesus, Judas Iscariot. And you know, that kind of played into the whole story of how Jesus was
12:20
taken out. But again, these weren't the tippy top people. These weren't the top 1% of best people
12:27
in the community. These are just regular people. So when people read these stories and they're like,
12:32
Oh, I can't really see myself in there. You better see yourself in that story. Because you're in there,
12:36
right? Most of us are, are those types of people, right? But there's a really important thing as we
12:42
look at the scripture here, there are mandates to the apostles that are explicitly specified
12:48
in this passage. Three, namely, there are three mandates. Number one, to be with Jesus.
12:54
Number two, to be ready to preach. And number three, be ready for spiritual warfare. And we see
13:01
those mandates in verse 14 and 15 going back to the segment from above. And he appointed 12,
13:06
whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him one, and he might send them out to
13:11
preach to and have authority to cast out demons three. So those were the mandates that are explicitly
13:20
there in the scriptures. And that's a job. I mean, my goodness, right? Just to be with Jesus,
13:25
because this guy was going everywhere, tough job, but also just to be ready to preach at the drop
13:30
of a hat. Again, these weren't guys that were preachers already. These were tax collectors and
13:35
fishermen, like these, these weren't, you know, preacher type people, right? And to be ready for
13:40
spiritual warfare. I mean, my goodness, like, I know some of you out there have hard jobs.
13:46
Is there a job that's harder than that to be ready for all those things? That's tough.
13:50
But also those are the mandates that are explicitly specified in the passage. But I'm almost more
13:56
excited about and focused on the mandates to the apostles that are not explicitly specified in
14:04
this passage. Okay. So here they are. Number one, they are to subjugate themselves completely to the
14:11
tutelage of Jesus. Number two, they are to be fully prepared to immediately act on Jesus's behalf.
14:17
And number three, they are to support and develop one another as a godly foxhole.
14:23
So let's go back to number one there to subjugate themselves completely to the tutelage of Jesus.
14:27
Okay. So this was not a job where it's like, okay, I can kind of be in and I can kind of be out.
14:32
Okay. They had to completely live under the tutelage of this man.
14:37
And they said yes to it. Like we don't see anything in the scripture above where Jesus forced these
14:43
men to accept this job or that, you know, he was kind of throwing it out there and whoever responded
14:47
first got to join. But these guys had to come along, but in order to do so, they couldn't be about
14:53
themselves. Everything had to be about Jesus and what he was teaching them. And the second thing,
14:59
they are to be fully prepared to immediately act on Jesus's behalf. I don't get the sense
15:05
that Jesus asked the 12 disciples for a lot of advice in terms of the things he wanted to do or
15:10
the places he wanted to go. Because you know, he's kind of like God. And I think God has an idea as
15:16
to kind of where he wants to go and how he wants to go and when he wants to go someplace. So I don't
15:19
feel like there was a lot of discussion in a lot of these situations. So these men had to be fully
15:24
ready. I mean, at the drop of a hat to immediately do what Jesus told him to do. And on his behalf,
15:29
right? That's not explicitly said there in the scripture. But that's what these guys signed up
15:34
for. And the last thing they are to support and develop one another as a godly foxhole.
15:38
I don't get the sense from scripture either that Jesus wanted these men to not, you know,
15:43
interact with one another, right? That he only wanted them to react, you know, with a straight
15:48
line of communication to him and ignore the other 11. I don't get that sense whatsoever.
15:52
And so implicit in this scripture is that these guys need to support one another.
15:58
That this is a group of guys that have different skill sets and talents.
16:03
Again, these weren't the most talented at the most talented, but they still have talents.
16:06
They still had gifts and they had some things probably to teach one another.
16:10
And so implicit in that scripture is that this group of guys, this 12 group, 12 men,
16:16
and then you had Jesus being the 13th, they're going to be there developing as a godly foxhole
16:21
under the tutelage of the son of God, which is so that's just awesome. I mean, what a cool story
16:27
to find yourself in. But here's the other thing. In order for the 12 apostles to be with Jesus,
16:32
be ready to preach and be ready for spiritual warfare. They had to be spiritually, mentally,
16:37
and physically resilient. And there really can be no reasonable argument to the contrary, right?
16:44
Because spiritually, I mean, in order to be with Jesus, be ready to preach and be ready for
16:48
spiritual warfare, like you have to have some spiritual maturity. You have to have this ability
16:52
to bounce back because you're going to be learning lessons from Jesus that you don't quite understand,
16:55
but you need to apply them. And you also need to do battle in the spiritual realms.
16:59
You know, mentally, this had to be draining on these men. Because again, these weren't the best
17:03
of the best dudes around the smartest dudes around. This had to be a mental drain on them, some of the
17:07
things that they had to do and had to work through. And then physically, they were going around
17:11
everywhere, right? We don't get the sense that these guys were setting up a tent and having people
17:15
come to them. Obviously, they were going places. They were constantly traveling. That's tough when
17:19
you physically. And likewise, in order for the 12 apostles to subjugate themselves completely to
17:25
the tutelage of Jesus, you know, to be fully prepared to immediately act on Jesus's behalf
17:30
and to support and develop one another as a godly foxhole, they had to be spiritually mentally and
17:35
physically resilient. So spiritually speaking, if you're going to be under the tutelage of somebody
17:41
that is claiming to be the son of God and ended up being the son of God, that's a spiritual resilience
17:46
test pretty much on a daily basis, right? And if you're supporting people that are in your foxhole,
17:51
you're probably leaning on the Holy Spirit, you're leaning on God in this situation to tell you
17:56
how you should interact with these men and how you can help them. And mentally, I mean, just the
18:00
mental act of subjugating yourself before someone else's authority is tough for a lot of men, right?
18:06
It's certainly tough for me whenever I have to be under someone else's authority, right? Now,
18:11
I've never been under the authority, you know, on an earthly sense and as to someone like Jesus,
18:15
so it's a little bit different. But again, just to be ready to act immediately,
18:19
on his behalf, I mean, for a lot of you guys, that may seem like that's a rubber band that's
18:23
been stretched too far, like to always be on to always be ready. That's a tough mental task,
18:28
but you have to be, you have to be fully prepared in these situations to act in that way. But also,
18:34
physical resilience, you're doing things in service to Jesus and in service to the people around you.
18:41
And a lot of that has to do with your physicality. These men were moving things from place to place.
18:46
They were helping each other. I mean, just think about whenever Jesus fed the masses,
18:50
like these guys were using their hands and they were going out feeding these people
18:54
from their baskets, right? And Jesus was taking care of the rest, but they really had to be ready
19:00
to go physically in order to do that. So we kind of have an ultimate list that comes out of all this,
19:05
and it's this. Number one, be with Jesus. Number two, be ready to preach. Number three,
19:12
be ready for spiritual warfare. Number four, be subjugated to the tutelage of Jesus. Number five,
19:18
be prepared to act on Jesus's behalf. And number six, develop one another as a godly
19:24
foxhole. I mean, that's a pretty good list of marching orders there. I mean, for all of us,
19:31
but as we get in further to this idea of what a foxhole is and what it should be and how you should
19:37
fill it and how you should maintain it, I mean, really what we're going to be spending the next
19:40
two days on, this is a good place to come back to. Because you have to also remember, is this how
19:47
you're acting? If you go through that ultimate list of six things, are you acting in that way?
19:53
Are you checking all those boxes? Are you looking for those qualities in other men,
19:59
other men that you're going to have be around you that you're going to do life with? It's really
20:02
important. So again, our definition of a foxhole, a foxhole is a group of men that constantly push
20:08
each other to cultivate spiritual, mental and physical resilience daily. All right, guys,
20:14
before you move on to the next thing, here are some questions to ask yourself. Number one,
20:18
do I have a true foxhole? If not, why not? And guys, if I'm going to venture a guess,
20:24
I'm going to say the most of you are going to say no to this, especially after the next two
20:28
days when you really look at, okay, what, what is a foxhole? A lot of you guys, if you're being
20:33
honest with yourselves, you would say you don't have a lot of three AM friends. You don't have,
20:37
I'm all my way friends, right? A lot of those guys don't check those boxes and they're certainly not
20:42
a group of them. So if you don't have one, you need to kind of dig and discover why that is.
20:47
Second question here, if I were in trouble at three AM, would I have a godly, manly man to call?
20:54
Would I have a godly and manly man to call? I mean, that's that's a tough one because for some of you,
21:00
if you immediately put yourself in that three AM freak out situation and you can't think of
21:05
anybody to call, that's a tough spot to be in, right? That's partially why we're doing this,
21:10
so we can fix that. Last question here. Am I with Jesus ready to preach and ready for spiritual warfare?
21:18
Now the first part, obviously, are you with Jesus? That that's something that you've really got to
21:23
reckon with. You know, have you accepted him into your heart? Is that is that a relationship,
21:28
a discipleship connection that you constantly think about? And then they're ready to preach part,
21:32
most of you think like, whoa, there's a guy at my church that, you know, he's getting paid to do
21:36
that. So I don't need to be worried about that. But are you ready to provide an apology and answer
21:41
for why you believe what you believe? That's preaching fellas. And are you ready for spiritual
21:46
warfare? Are you ready to go to battle for your family? If they're being attacked spiritually for
21:52
your friends, for your foxhole? If you're not, it's going to be a problem. All right, guys,
21:56
for more content like this, check out the rest of our podcast episodes, wherever you get your
21:59
podcasts. And don't forget to leave a review and a five star rating and check out our website at
22:03
www.undaunted.life. Also, we are five days into this. And if you've already gotten a ton of value out
22:09
of this devotional and would like to download the entire series for your personal future use,
22:13
please go to www.undaunted.life/donate/foxhole. We will make sure the link is in the description
22:19
so you can easily get there. www.undaunted.life/donate/foxhole. Give us a donation,
22:26
commensurate with the amount of value you think you've gotten from this already and download the
22:30
episodes for your use. Make sure you come back tomorrow for day six where we discuss why all men
22:35
need a foxhole. Until then, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and
22:41
physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.